Some good links you could use for learning the language.

Chinese or Mandarin, is called Putonghua in China. This is the language spoken by most of the population in China and are the Beijing dialect. The language is written in simplified chinese. In Taiwan they use older kind of Chinese called Goya and that one is written in classical chinese signs. The Beijing dialect contain a lot of consonants while the dialect here in wuxi contains more wovels. That will say it may be more difficult to understand all chinese language spoken down here. In wovels you've got five different pronounciations and these are important. And even more important when the people do not pronounce the consonants. If you miss one of these pronounciations in wovels it may be very difficult for a chinese to understand you.

You need to understand about 2000 signs to be able reading an ordinary newspaper down here. Most chinese understand about 5500 signs and then they are able to read about 93 % of the chinese language. I beleive we "westernes" should try to keep to "statechinese" because the majority of chinese understands it. The goverment decided, in the beginning of 2000 decade, that news on television should be spoken in the Beijing dialect and due to that most chinese today understand this Beijing or "country chinese" properly.

In Wuxi they talk a kind of soft dialect. The wu dialect(or language) from the old empire of Wu that where conquered during the time of three kingdoms 280 AC. The chinese describe this dialect as the singing dialect and they often "hide" the consonants for using more pronounciations on the wovels. For example. A word like Zaiwee(see you again) they pronounce in many different ways. Depending on if it should be meant sarcastic, with humour or with your heart. Yes, you'll have to make that experience your self. Many of the inhabitants find their dialect very funny and I assure you you'll get a lot of smiles and laughter that way. Expressions like "Good evening" that should be pronounced "Wang shang hao" sounded instead "Wa an" with some funny pronounciations between the consonants.

Growing up with chinese
is a good and long course where you'll learn about 300 phrases in 100 episodes on 15 minutes each. The teacher is Charlotte McInnis who is born in China and moved to the U.S by the age of seven. In the different episodes you'll see and hear different actors using expressions like Ni Hao, Xie xie, Bu jung xie and other expressions you could use. Charlotte are doing a good review after each episode. Could be a useful work during the many hours you sit on the flight to and away from China or if you get stuck on an airport on the way. You are able to download all episodes so you do not have to connect with the internet for seeing them after they are downloaded. You get access to all episodes here>>>

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Chinese signs and letters

Could help you understand how important the pronounciation is for saying different words. As example the word Guan could mean both official or lodging depending on how you pronounce it.

There are around 56000 chinese signs and I have not heard that anyone, even in China, be able to remember all of these. A "normal" chinese is maybe able to understand around 5-6000 of these signs. To be able to understand something of a chinese newspaper you'll need to understand, at least, 2000 signs. You get a long way with 1500 to be able to understand signs and pr in trainstations, restaurants and that kind of signs. Many of the signs is logical because they show a picture like a rebus so with some kind of fantasy you could understand quite a lot of them. Like the sign for good(Hao) is written with a child and a woman. The sign for origin is symbolised with two persons and so on.

You'll find a lot of interesting explanations and are also able to hear the pronounciation from different chinese signs out on chinese4.eu or chinese for europeans is a coursus made for us living in Europe made by the european commission.

Study abroad in ChinaStudy in China for various programs in the fields of Medicine, Engineering, Business and Economics, Management, etc

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Some funny translations of chinese letters. I've seen that we do the same. That will say use google translator for translating chinese language. Simple phrases usually get a success but as long as we try translating whole sentences we get into the same problems. Some of them are quite funny and I understand why chinese, sometimes, get a laughter when I've been trying translating text.

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